Silence is Golden

Last night while I sitting and reading blogs, I realized it was quiet. Usually Someone has the television on, and/or I have my ipod on continual play.

In the quiet, there were some wooden chimes clacking during a wind surge. And that was that.

Silence. Marvelous and peaceful Silence.

How often to I encounter this? I suspect not often. There seems to be more and more noise every year. Offices and stores always have the stereo going. Silence is no longer the rule, but the exception.

“Be still, and know I am the Lord” is an expression with truth to it – how can I get in touch with the divine (let alone myself) with constant noise? Milton described Heaven as a place where there is either music or silence.” C.S. Lewis on the other hand portrayed hell as the Kingdom of Noise.

I need to experience Quiet more often; it is good for me.

Tonight, I will turn off every techno-noise maker so I can sit in Silence.

Dead quiet is like nectar. Relative quiet, while not quite a precious, is still a thing of joy. We live on the very edge of a large university, in a “mid-town” neighborhood. What I notice most during Christmas break is the almost complete absence of ambient traffic noise – not the obvious car horns and engine acceleration, but rather the omnipresent background roar that you don’t notice until it’s not there. I soak it up.

I could use some silence. My son and his girlfriend and 3 of their children were here till this morning. There was screaming, yelling, crying, a whole roller coaster of emotions, and the kids made some noise too.

When we first moved here from San Francisco, the quiet was deafening. But now we’re used to it and little noises that urban dwellers may not notice seem loud to us. A train in the valley, a barking dog half a mile away, a truck going by on the next road over, farm machinery, neighbors laughing, airplanes (we can even hear jets far above at cruising altitude), and the occasional whoooosh! of a hot air balloon’s burner.